


Checkmate

by taralynden



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taralynden/pseuds/taralynden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chip and Prowl play chess, both on the board and with some of the Autobots' biggest secrets</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checkmate

**Author's Note:**

> Written as the auction item for the help_nz Christchurch Earthquake appeal, for winning bidder femme4jack. Can be read as a prequel to _Immaculate conception_ but also stands alone.

Chip Chase wandered through the echoing corridors of the _Ark_ , the metal surfaces making it almost effortless for him to guide his wheelchair. The first time he had come here he had feared the slick metal might mean his wheels would spin but in fact it gave good traction without holding him back. He had been surprised by that until he thought about it: after all, the Autobots had wheels in their altmodes and they would not want to be skidding everywhere. It was probably intentional.

In any case, this was the first time he had ever been here and able to wander freely on his own. Usually he was completely surrounded by mechs chattering away and suggesting activities and offering to carry him. He had bristled slightly at that last the first few times, disappointed to find he was getting 'special' treatment because he was disabled, but then he realised they treated Spike, Carly and Sparkplug exactly the same way. Then he had laughed at himself. All of them were disabled, as far as the mechs were concerned: they were small and frail and could not communicate on the radio waves.

Today had started out the same as any other, settling into the chaos that was the _Ark_ , when an alarm rang out and everything suddenly stopped. The Decepticons had attacked a power station and the Autobots had to rush out to stop them. Spike and Carly had gone with them, excited by the opportunity as always, but Chip was not overly keen on putting himself into that kind of situation deliberately.

After a quick discussion he had been left with Perceptor, and they had talked for awhile but it was obvious the scientist wanted to get back to his work, so Chip encouraged him to do so. Unfortunately there was very little he could do to help as his partner began an indepth analysis of a rock Beachcomber had brought him, making notes in his native language, so Chip eventually slipped away and left him to it.

Less than a minute after he left Perceptor's lab Red Alert had appeared, demanding to know where he was going and snapping that he should go to the rec room if he was bored but should stay out of the halls in case someone came rushing through them with an emergency. Knowing Red well enough not to be upset by the lecture, Chip good-naturedly agreed to go to the rec room. It was as good a destination as any other with so many bots away.

Arriving there he found only two mechs present: Beachcomber was watching a documentary about Vesuvius and Pompeii; Swoop was sitting at one of the tables focused on something in front of him.

"What are you working on, Swoop?"

The Dinobot squawked a little, startled, then smiled down at him.

"Chip! Me Swoop think you go with others. Why you stay here?"

"Well I can't really fight the Decepticons, can I?"

Swoop gave him a sharp frown.

"You little Chip not supposed to fight big scary Decepticons."

"Well that's why I stayed here."

The frown disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared and he was scooped up and set down on the table.

"You Chip, very smart." Swoop approved.

Chip turned his wheelchair to see what Swoop had been focused on, and was disappointed to see it was just a very large reproduction of a set of newspaper cartoon strips. Those were always excruciatingly difficult to explain even to Bumblebee; he had no intention of making an attempt with the intellectually challenged Swoop.

He was seeking some kind of diversion when he spotted something familiar on a nearby table.

"Hey, is that a chess set? Whose is it?"

Swoop turned to look.

"Oh. Him Slag practicing. Want me Swoop to learn, but me Swoop say this not fun."

" _Slag_ plays chess? How did that happen?"

"Prowl being in one of his moods." Beachcomber volunteered from the couch. "Sometimes instead of punishing troublemakers with cleaning or extra patrols, he tries to bore them into line."

"Prowl? Really? I didn't know he played chess!"

"Of course." Swoop nodded readily. "He Prowl..."

"Loves logical things." Beachcomber finished quickly, cutting off the other mech and looking abruptly alert. "We all know that, right?"

Swoop was nodding happily so Chip just did the same, wondering what the Dinobot had been about to say. Still, it was probably much the same as what Beachcomber had said. Prowl _was_ logical, everyone knew that. And that actually made a lot of sense, suddenly. If anyone in the crew did like chess, he supposed it would be him.

He had never given Prime's administrator much thought. Prowl's job seemed to involve little more than writing reports that bored the other mechs to distraction, keeping track of the constantly shifting duty roster, and thinking up punishments for the twins when he caught them causing trouble. Given his tendency to glitch over anything illogical, he was a kind of hyper-focused Mr Spock, but maybe this was a mech he should have spent more time talking to. Most of the others liked physical things and Chip could not always participate. Chess, though, was his kind of fun.

So long as Prowl _really_ played, and it wasn't just some kind of weird form of torture for a Dinobot who wouldn't know if he was mucking about with the rules.

"Is Prowl here?" he asked.

"Nah, he's gone to fight. Hey Chip, if you've got nothing better to do, come watch this with me and explain it. Why do people live so close to active volcanoes?"

Well, if nothing else it would fill in time.

* * *

Prowl glared at the miscreant across his desk, standing in the shadow of a supporter, and watched them shift uncomfortably as he remained silent. One of them finally tried to speak and he cut them off.

"How many times have you been told not to use the back corridors while we have human visitors?"

"He didn't see anything." the taller one tried to argue.

"Only because he happened to be facing the other way at the time. But if he puts any thought into the fact that you materialised from a dead end corridor..."

"The humans don't put _any_ thought into such things." the smaller one snapped. "They're totally oblivious."

"Cute, but not bright." his companion added.

Prowl's doorwings twitched in irritation.

"I have provided thousands of documented examples of the opposite. They are naive but not stupid. Those in the concealed areas must either remain there during a visit or must use the back exit to loop around the mountain and return through the public entrance. We _must_ do this, or risk their curiosity."

"If I had taken that long to get to him he could have gone anywhere!"

"There is nowhere to go." Prowl countered. "Without the help of one of us he could not have accessed the back corridors. His options were limited. As ours must remain to appear to be. I thought you understood that this is a security issue."

Red Alert scowled.

"I just don't understand why we can't simply _tell_ them they can't come back here. Our offices would be off-limits either way, and so would everyone's quarters."

"Firstly, because it would give them a completely different impression of who we are from the way we are acting - our command structure, and intimate interactions. And do not try to tell me that they would not discover that last; there is barely a pairing in this crew who has not been caught breaking the physical contact rules out in the open, Primus forbid we ever have to explain more than that."

"You and Jazz are as guilty of that as any of the rest of us." Red Alert growled.

Prowl ignored that. The fact that Jazz continually tweaked his doorwings in the presence of the humans was something of a dilemma that he had not yet found a solution to. It was so hard to reprimand him properly when he was revving that much. Perhaps next time he could feign a freeze and get Ratchet to yell at him? Might work.

"Secondly," he continued firmly, "it would make them curious - telling them they could not come in would not stop them trying, it would only make them more determined to manage it somehow. I do not need the stress of knowing they might be back here where they could be accidentally harmed by mechs not expecting them to be around.

"And finally," he finished, "because to reveal this now would be to reveal that we have been lying to them. Any such revelation would have to be carefully managed or risk damaging our carefully built trust. Now go, I have other things to do."

* * *

Thinking about how he had totally ignored Prowl up until now made Chip take an active interest in all of the Autobots. At which point he realised that there were a lot of gaps in his understanding of them.

Optimus was the Prime, their leader, but his exact role was actually unclear. He led in battle, but was he really called Prime just for that? Things Bumblebee had said suggested not, that in fact it was something more spiritual, yet any time Chip asked about religion he only received blank looks.

Going back to Bumblebee, things got worse. Apart from keeping Spike safe, what exactly did Bumblebee do? He did patrols around the _Ark_ only irregularly, and had no qualms about stopping halfway to do something else. He claimed to be a scout, same as Hound, but while Hound spent his time exploring, Bumblebee just hung around.

Even Ratchet's role as a doctor was confusing. Wheeljack had created the Dinobots and claimed to have built other mech frames in the past but insisted he had no medical knowledge. And Hoist did repairs but said he was just trained for maintenance. Why did a machine need medicine anyway? What was the difference between maintenance and medical care? Why was Ratchet so special?

As he started to try to categorise the Autobots he ended up with three broad groups: military, civilian and unknown. Ironhide, Brawn, Warpath, Jazz and the twins were definitely military, and he hesitantly added Optimus. Perceptor, Ratchet, Blaster, Wheeljack, Hoist, Grapple, Beachcomber and Gears were definitely civilian, happy to pitch in but happier doing their own thing. Which left quite a number of others.

Which brought him to his next revelation: the _Ark_ was too small.

It seemed ridiculous when he first thought it. The ship was huge, the ceilings high enough for Omega Supreme to stand upright and wide enough for Optimus to walk side by side with both Ironhide and Jazz, as he often did. His two constant companions, the mechs he expected to get things done. And yet the proportions were odd.

Most of the _Ark_ was crushed under the mountain, completely inaccessible. The recreation room was the biggest single space, followed by Teletran's room, and most bots could be found in one of those two place at any given time. The only other spaces were Prime's office off Teletran's room, Wheeljack's lab, Perceptor's lab which he shared with Skyfire, the maintenance bay where Hoist, Grapple and most of the minibots worked, the Dinobots' lair which was dug into the mountain itself, and Ratchet's repair bay which was in a shuttle outside.

Why had all these mechs been in one place when the ship crashed? Had there been a party on? Were they really all such great friends that they didn't feel any need for privacy? He had tried to express his concerns to Spike by pointing out that there was nowhere for them to all sleep. His friend, as was often the case, entirely missed the point.

"Well of course not. They probably don't need to sleep, they're not human, remember? Maybe energon's all they need."

"But Bumblebee himself told us they had to recharge."

"Did he? Well maybe they just plug in somewhere. Anyway they probably don't have to do it that often. Remember he said one of his days was two weeks long? Oh! Maybe they use the beds in the repair bay. I've seen them lying down there plugged in. Sometimes it's not even after a battle!"

It was possible, Chip conceded. After all, as refugees with a ruined ship they probably had to put up with a lot of privations. Maybe they'd just decided to accept what couldn't be fixed yet. It wouldn't be all that long, in terms of their incredible lifespans, and they were already planning to build their own city nearby.

Letting go of that consideration for now, it was still true that they had gotten seriously lucky to have all been crammed into the same space during the crash. Particularly when he remembered that the Decepticons had also been aboard.

He had a brief mental image of a cross-factional sleepover, or perhaps something even more intimate... then laughed at himself. One thing he knew for sure: mechanical beings like the Autobots definitely did not have sex. They seemed utterly clueless about human relations and totally unaware of the growing relationship between Spike and Carly. Jazz, Blaster and Bumblebee were a little more on to it than the rest of them, and Ratchet and Perceptor had both had mortifyingly explicit questions until they had gotten the message that this topic was not for open discussion, but mostly behaviour like hugs and kisses confused them. And the time Bumblebee had seen an explicit sex scene at a drive-in movie he had commented that wrestling without clothes on must be very painful based on the noises that were made.

In any case, the issue of how they had all gotten here niggled at him. And then he noticed something else: mechs sometimes disappeared. Not Mirage, though the spy's penchant for sudden appearances got no easier on the nerves with practice. Any bot. And certain bots in particular. Prowl was a good example.

Where did he go? He was not always on patrol or in Teletran's room, but he was only rarely in the rec room. Where else _was_ there to go? He did what he could to explore around the outside, considering that perhaps there was another entrance leading to other rooms. The sands made it difficult to move around, but he managed to convince Hound and Trailbreaker he was very interested in the surroundings and went on several long trips.

They found nothing. And while on the first few outings he thought they might have been avoiding certain areas, when he showed an interest in anything he soon found they were more than willing to clamber up cliffs and help him down into gullies to explore.

He had all but given up on that thought, having decided that perhaps they did just manage with the space they had, when he happened across an interesting conversation. It was during a very wet day when most mechs were trapped inside and yet he had been unable to find either of his friends to continue his exploring. Neither were in Teletran's room so he had moved on to the rec room in time to hear a bitter complaint.

"He doesn't understand how bad it is out there." Tracks was fuming to an unsympathetic audience as Chip approached. "I'd like to see _him_ out there instead of hiding in his office."

"He takes his turn." Smokescreen countered. "He was out all night with Trailbreaker."

"Who was out all night?" Chip asked. "Not Optimus!"

They had not realised he was listening in and now focused on him.

"Oh hey, Chip, how are you? Awful weather, isn't it?" Smokescreen smiled at him as Tracks slunk away muttering about using the washracks.

"Who was patrolling all night?" Chip asked again. "Did you say Optimus?"

"Oh no, he doesn't need to patrol with the rest of us just hanging around doing nothing. Prowl was out with Trailbreaker last night. But don't worry about that. Did you see...?"

"But Prowl doesn't have an office." Chip interrupted.

"Of course he doesn't."

"But Tracks said he was hiding in his office."

"Prime's office." Smokescreen corrected him. "Prowl does a lot of data work in Prime's office. He's probably there right now."

"Great, I've been hoping to catch up with him. See ya."

He heard the others calling to him, but he would not be delayed. If it had not been a slip of the tongue, if Tracks had meant what it _sounded_ like he had meant, then if he got to the Prime's office quickly enough he would find that Prowl wasn't there. And _then_ he could ask about where he was.

Reaching Teletran's room he grinned. Optimus, Jazz and Ironhide were there, apparently seriously researching snowmen. They tried to draw him into conversation but he kept going, promising to come back. The only way to get to Optimus's office was through this room, so either Prowl was already there or the room was empty.

To his mild disappointment, he found Prowl sitting at the large desk, entering data on the terminal there.

"Hi Prowl."

"Oh hello Chip. Are you looking for Optimus?"

"No, I'm looking for you. What are you doing?"

The mech politely picked him up and set him on the desk, then gestured to the screen.

"I'm analysing the pollutant levels around the _Ark_ to discover whether our efforts to remove pollutants are having an effect."

"Isn't that Perceptor's job?"

"Perceptor determines the test methods and identifies solutions. It's not a good use of his time and skill to have him collate the data."

"You're good with that sort of thing."

"Yes, it is a major function for me."

"Oh, okay. Hey listen, I've been meaning to ask you if..."

He was interrupted by Optimus entering the room.

"Excuse me, Chip, but could we possibly have your assistance out here? Can you explain the purpose of the scarf, it hardly seems sufficient for warmth..."

Chip smiled tolerantly and agreed. Now that he knew where Prowl spent much of his time, he could find him again. And next time he would make sure to ask about playing chess.

* * *

Prowl looked up at the form filling the doorway.

"He's gone." Optimus told him.

Prowl sighed in relief, giving up on the tedious work he had been dutifully doing in case Chip returned.

"Thank Primus we put in that spare entrance to your office. I barely made it in time."

"He did seem quite determined to locate you, or perhaps even to prove that you were not in the location he had been told."

Prowl nodded soberly.

"I have said repeatedly that the humans can be curious. And that curiosity does not develop along logical or predictable lines."

"Bumblebee has made the same observation, though so far he seems to have deflected most of the queries that come his way. He was a good choice of envoy. Curious, though, that Chip would fixate on you."

"Beachcomber tells me Chip is interested in me because he found out I play chess. Harmless enough, but it does mean that I need to be visibly present more often until he gets over this interest. It may delay some of my work. Perhaps if I begin regularly doing night shifts again...?"

Optimus laughed.

"And have Jazz whining to me again that he never gets to see you? No thank you. That mech can be a handful. And speaking of him, I hear you finally sorted out his habit of teasing you in public. Want to let me in on how?"

Prowl smiled. He had had a frank discussion with Jazz, pointing out the pros and cons, and then had made an ultimatum: every touch in public meant a full orn - or two Earth weeks - without so much as a hug in private even if that meant Prowl would have find somewhere else to recharge. Since then there had not been a single problem.

"Oh, he can be made to see reason if the argument is clear enough."

* * *

The very next time Chip visited the _Ark_ he was pleased to find Prowl alone in Teletran's room. He approached him about playing chess and the mech said he would be happy to, but when they went to the rec room to have a game it turned out that the pieces in Prowl's set were too big and heavy and awkward for Chip to manipulate. Which led to the idea of maybe playing online instead, and back to Teletran's room to introduce Prowl to the website where Chip played regularly.

"You need to choose a username."

"My name is Prowl."

"Sorry, looks like someone's already taken that."

"There's someone else called Prowl?"

"Well it's probably not their real name. The idea is that you choose another... uh, identity. You get it?"

Prowl hesitated.

"I'm not sure. Could you give me an example? What is your username?"

"It's there on the screen."

**iluvbobbyfisher**

Prowl stared at it for a moment, then looked at him curiously.

"I did not realise you had a mate, Chip. You should bring Bobby to meet us."

"Oh no! No I don't even know Bobby Fisher."

"Then why do you say you love him?"

"Well it doesn't really mean that. I mean I _admire_ him. He's really great at chess."

Prowl cocked his head to one side, considering, then nodded decisively and typed in a username.

**iluvoptimusprime**

"Thank you, Chip, I understand now. I would be proud to have a username indicating my admiration for our Prime - I think this is a very good thing. Now what is the password I should use?"

Chip dragged his eyes away from the somewhat inappropriate username. The Autobots were so literal sometimes, it became hard to explain some of the subtleties of everyday life. Some things were just easier left awkward rather than try - and inevitably fail - to correct them.

"Well the password should be something secure that no-one can guess. It's supposed to include upper and lower case letters and numbers and can have any of the characters listed there. It has to be at least six characters long but the longer you can make it, the better."

Prowl nodded and entered a long string of characters, then quite readily repeated the feat in the next box.

"I hope that that is secure enough." he fretted. "At only thirty-seven characters it is not difficult to decipher but that's as many as the system will accept."

"I'm sure it will be fine." Chip assured him. "Alright, so you're all set up. So I'll log in at 6 o'clock tonight, and we can play."

"I'm looking forward to it." Prowl assured him.

* * *

Jazz entered his room and found Prowl sitting at the small desk but barely paying attention to the terminal, instead flicking idly through a mech-sized magazine. Some of the human media had done trials of producing their publications in special editions for the Autobots and a few of the crew now had regular subscriptions. This one appeared to be advertising garden plants, probably one of Hound's. Amused at his partner's choice of relaxation material, Jazz leaned down and kissed Prowl leisurely, feeling his partner's lips spread into a smile as he did so.

"About time you came in. Did you have fun with Blaster and Raoul?"

"Yeah, it was good. A shame Tracks didn't wanna go, really, he mighta enjoyed himself."

"A breakdancing competition is hardly his entertainment of choice."

"He's comin' round. He's fond o'that boy."

"Because he has managed to convince 'that boy' to spend much of his spare time waxing and buffing his finish to the point where even Sunstreaker is starting to talk about humans having a value." Prowl responded drily, then leaned across to type in a few brief commands with one hand.

Jazz looked at the display curiously but had not bothered to learn the rules of the game and the representation meant nothing to him.

"How's the game goin'?"

"Chip's going to win this one."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mm. This is the last round for tonight. We've each won two so far, so this will leave him ahead. Unless he makes too many foolish mistakes." he added, watching a move on the screen with a slight frown. "I believe he's getting tired."

"Well it's almost 2 o'clock." Jazz pointed out. "He's gonna need his sleep. Know someone else who could, too."

"You just want someone to cuddle." Prowl teased him.

"Sure do." Jazz nodded. "Hey, what's that?"

Prowl looked up from his magazine.

"What is what?"

" 'I love Optimus Prime'? Tryin' t'make me jealous, mech?"

Prowl chuckled.

"It was too good an opportunity to miss. Chip was trying to explain his own screen name in terms of admiration instead of intimate affection, so I took him up on it."

"You're a bit sneaky at times, Sparkles."

"Well if so, I know where I got it from. Ah. Here we go."

He sat up and typed a few things into the terminal, setting the magazine aside. A few exchanges later, he turned it off.

"Done?" Jazz asked.

"Done." Prowl agreed.

"Good. Then lets have a bit o'this so-called 'intimate affection', eh?"

"Gladly."

* * *

Chip soon came to enjoy Monday nights. That was when Prowl would log on and they would play chess into the early hours of Tuesday morning. Thank God he had no classes on a Tuesday!

Prowl claimed he was still learning the rules of chess, but played well if not imaginatively. Exactly as Chip would have expected. Chip won more matches than he lost, but every game was a challenge and if he did not pay full attention it always cost him.

"It'd be nice if he could be distracted just once." he sighed to a group of mechs one Tuesday afternoon. " _He_ doesn't need to go to the bathroom or answer the phone when he's playing."

Most of the others had commiserated, but Jazz had smiled broadly.

"I'll see what I can do, Chip ol'buddy. Ju' leave it all to the Jazz-man."

"What did he mean?" he asked the others as Jazz walked away.

"He's probably going to play a prank or something."

"Oh. Well I hope it works and doesn't just make Prowl angry."

The mechs around him looked amused.

"I think Jazz'll do a good job." Hound smiled. "He's known Prowl for a long time. Whatever he's planning, it'll work."

* * *

Prowl looked up suspiciously as Jazz sauntered into his office. His partner had been plotting something all day, grinning smugly and lurking nearby, and it was grating on his nerves.

"Whatever you're plotting I want no part in it." he said sharply.

Jazz did not so much as pout. A bad sign. He was going ahead with whatever this was and Prowl would have to just deal with it.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"You know perfectly well what I'm doing, I'm playing chess with Chip just as I do at this time _every_ Monday night. For your information I'm also collating the data from our last battle, writing the report Optimus wanted on the defence potential of the Metroplex site, and assessing your team's proposals."

"Sounds like you could use a break." Jazz commented, sliding up behind his chair and peering over his shoulder at the screen.

"I thought you wanted these assessments by t-tomorrow?" he asked, shuddering as clever fingers ghosted across his sensor panels.

"They can wait a bit." Jazz murmured lowly, directly into his audial while his fingers wandered further.

"W-wait!" Prowl gasped. "I need to concentrate!"

"Nope, not necessary." Jazz assured him, kissing the side of his neck in a particularly sensitive spot.

Prowl shivered but tried to maintain his focus.

"Chip... he's expecting... J-Jazz..."

"The kid won't mind too much if you skip out on jus' one game, I'm thinkin'. Besides, you're revvin' too hard for me t'jus' stop now. right?"

Prowl cursed at him, then arched almost completely out of his chair at a carefully timed brush against his sensitised hinges, overload catching him by surprise.

As he came out of that haze, he found Jazz had pulled him down onto the floor and was cuddling him close, the ops mech's own systems running hot and his plating deliciously warm against Prowl's own. Still, there were commitments to think of.

"I need to finish the game with Chip at the very least." he apologised.

Jazz pouted, then rose and headed for the door, letting his plating ripple slightly, knowing that that always turned Prowl on even harder.

"Be quick then, Sparkles. I'll be waitin'."

Prowl clenched his fists until it hurt, reminding himself that he had other priorities before he could follow.

Now. How quickly could he finish this game?

* * *

Tuesday afternoon, Jazz picked him up to bring him out to the _Ark_ for more exploring with Hound. He had given up on looking for secret entrances, having decided that there simply were none, but it was still a lot of fun being in the scout's company.

"Hey, Jazz."

"Hey there Chip. How'd your game go?"

He laughed brightly.

"I got totally served! Annihilated. He took me out in just seven moves! Thanks for trying, though. I guess whatever you tried didn't distract him."

"Really? But I thought... Oh. Sorry about that, Chip."

"No problem."

It didn't matter anyway. Playing against Prowl was fun, and he didn't really want the mech to go easy on him. He was better at chess than most people he knew, and the few who were better _always_ beat him, so this was much better.

* * *

"Question."

"Hmm?"

"You were seriously revved last night, right?"

Prowl looked at his partner in disbelief.

"I beg your pardon?"

Jazz was frowning deeply.

"You weren't just trickin' me somehow inta thinkin' you were into it?"

"Jazz, what's gotten into you?"

"Well, it's just that Chip asked me to distract you so he could win, except today he tells me you beat him."

Prowl suddenly understood and chuckled, pulling Jazz closer and kissing him firmly.

"You distracted me quite effectively, love. You had my complete and full attention."

"So why'd he still lose, then?"

"Because I couldn't concentrate. I needed to concentrate to stop my tactical centre from simply taking over. Once you distracted me, I beat him far more quickly than I usually allow myself to."

"Oh. Oops."

"Indeed. Now since I don't have that concern right at the moment, seeing as how my next game with him is not until next week, why don't you try distracting me again?"

Jazz grinned.

"One distraction? Check." he semi-quoted from television programmes he had seen.

Prowl grinned back.

"Check _mate_."

And after that there was very little said for quite some time.


End file.
